Yamaha launches flagship RIVAGE PM10 live desk

Ten years have passed since Yamaha last launched large-scale digital live production consoles in the shape of the PM5D and PM5D-RH. Since 2004, Yamaha’s agenda has focused on smaller footprint devices: the M7CL and LS9 desks, and in the last couple of years, the CL and QL ranges.

Yesterday at the InterBEE show in Japan, the world’s biggest music company unveiled the long awaited RIVAGE PM10 flagship console – with a moniker that recognises both its PM heritage and a new wave of design, as witnessed in last year’s NUAGE post-production console launch. Yamaha claims RIVAGE PM10 is “one of the most powerful and flexible digital mixing systems ever developed”.

At the core of the PM10 is the newly-developed RY16-ML-SILK Hybrid Microphone Preamplifier, a collaboration with console veteran Rupert Neve, which delivers “supremely consistent, natural-sounding audio, even at high gain levels”. It is partnered with a 96kHz, 24-bit A-D converter, followed by enhanced Yamaha VCM digital modelling of Rupert Neve Designs transformer circuitry and Silk processing.

Yamaha has worked with TC Electronic to include two reverbs, the VSS4HD room simulation reverb and the highly creative “NonLin2” stereo reverb, as featured in the TC System 6000 devices, and with Eventide, to add the H3000-Live Ultra-Harmonizer as a standard inclusion in the RIVAGE PM10 system.

Twenty-four of the control surface’s channel strips extend into the twin, 15-inch touchscreen displays, while rotary encoders feature ‘horseshoe’ ring indicators for optimum visibility. A third display screen can be added via a DVI socket, if required.

Further innovations include greatly enhanced Scene functions, dual monitor busses, the ability to run up to 384 effects processors at once and four USB connections for data storage, mouse/keyboard control and two track USB recording.

The backbone of the RIVAGE PM10 system is Yamaha’s newly developed TWINLANe ring network, which can handle up to 400 audio channels at 96kHz, 32-bit over distances of up to 300 metres. TWINLANe can connect up to eight RPio622 i/o units and, at launch, up to two CS-R10 control surfaces and up to two DSP-R10 DSP engines.

A new, optional HY-Dante card can be used to integrate multitrack recording or other hardware, including other Yamaha digital consoles.

“For a number of years, the industry has been asking when Yamaha will launch a new, state-of-the-art digital console for large scale productions,” says Chihaya ‘Chick’ Hirai, director of the Pro Audio Business Unit, Yamaha Corporation of Japan. “We have always said that, when it comes, it will be as much a landmark for the industry as the PM1D and PM5D were. So I am very pleased to say that, with RIVAGE PM10, that time has arrived.

“We believe that RIVAGE PM10 will be another pivotal moment in the history of digital audio mixing. It delivers a system which will be the most versatile, the most user-friendly and the most reliable for all larger events.

“We look forward to introducing sound engineers to RIVAGE PM10 and inspiring them with the dawn of a new age for live sound digital mixing systems.”

At the time of writing, shipping and pricing details had been requested but were not available.

Yamaha kickstarted the live digital console revolution inSeptember 1999 when it launched the PM1D digital mixing system at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Production of the desk finally ceased in December 2009.